“Forgiveness is the fragrance that the violet sheds on the heal that has crushed it.” ~Mark Twain

“Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence.” ~Sholem Asch

“Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another.” ~Jean Paul Richter

“Forgiveness means letting go of the past.” ~Gerald Jampolsky

“It is very easy to forgive others their mistakes; it takes more grit and gumption to forgive them for having witnessed your own.” ~Jessamyn West

“Never does the human soul appear so strong as when it foregoes revenge, and dares forgive an injury.” ~E. H. Chapin

“The stupid neither forgive nor forget; the naive forgive and forget; the wise forgive and do not forget.” ~Paul Tillich

“Holding resentment is like eating poison and waiting for the other person to keel over.” ~Unknown

“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.” ~Josh Billings

“Sincere forgiveness isn’t colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don’t worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time—just like it does for you and me.” ~Sara Paddison

“It takes one person to forgive, it takes two people to be reunited.” ~Louis B. Smedes

“If we practice and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, soon the whole world will be blind and toothless.” ~Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Paul Boese

“Forgiveness is better than revenge, for forgiveness is the sign of a gentle nature, but revenge is the sign of a savage nature.” ~Isaac Friedmann

“He who has not forgiven an enemy has never yet tasted one of the most sublime enjoyments of life.” ~C.S. Lewis

“Who am I not to forgive?” ~Pinkola Estes

“It’s toughest to forgive ourselves. So it’s probably best to start with other people. It’s almost like peeling an onion. Layer by layer, forgiving others, you really do get to the point where you can forgive yourself.” ~Patty Duke

“What power has love but forgiveness? In other words by its intervention what has been done can be undone. What good is it otherwise?” ~Charles Williams

“Forgiveness is the sweetest revenge.” ~Malcolm Forbes

“Yes, this is what good is: to forgive evil. There is no other good.” ~Antonio Porchia

“Forgive all who have offended you, not for them, but for yourself.” ~Harriet Nelson

“Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

“‘I can forgive, but I cannot forget,’ is only another way of saying, ‘I will not forgive.’ Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.” ~Henry Ward Beecher

“Let us forgive each other – only then will we live in peace.” ~Leo Tolstoy

“It is in pardoning that we are pardoned.” ~William Shakespeare

“A winner rebukes and forgives; a loser is too timid to rebuke and too petty to forgive.” ~Seamus Heaney

“Forgiveness breaks the chain of causality because he who forgives you – out of love – takes upon himself the consequences of what you have done. Forgiveness, therefore, always entails a sacrifice.” ~Sidney J. Harris

“It is not ‘forgive and forget’ as if nothing wrong had ever happened, but ‘forgive and go forward,’ building on the mistakes of the past and the energy generated by reconciliation to create a new future.” ~Alan Paton

“Forgiveness is not an occasional act. It is a permanent attitude.” ~Ann Landers

“Many people are afraid to forgive because they feel they must remember the wrong or they will not learn from it. The opposite is true. Through forgiveness, the wrong is released from its emotional stranglehold on us so that we can learn from it. Through the power and intelligence of the heart, the release of forgiveness brings expanded intelligence to work with the situation more effectively.” ~David McArthur & Bruce McArthur

“Genuine forgiveness is participation, reunion overcoming the powers of estrangement. We cannot love unless we have accepted forgiveness, and the deeper our experience of forgiveness is, the greater is our love.” ~Desmond Tutu

“Many promising reconciliations have broken down because while both parties come prepared to forgive, neither party come prepared to be forgiven.” ~Marianne Williamson

“Forget and forgive. This is not difficult when properly understood. It means forget inconvenient duties, then forgive yourself for forgetting. By rigid practice and stern determination, it comes easy.” ~Peter Ustinov

“We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.” ~Ellen Goodman

“The ineffable joy of forgiving and being forgiven forms an ecstasy that might well arouse the envy of the gods.” ~Kim Hubbard

“To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.” ~Course in Miracles

“Forgiveness is the scent that the rose leaves on the heel that crushes it.” ~John Arnott

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” ~Reinhold Niebuhr

“Apologizing does not always mean that you are wrong and the other person is right. It just means that you value your relationship more than your ego.” ~Unknown

“A happy marriage is the union of two good forgivers.” ~Robert Quillen

“Never forget the three powerful resources you always have available to you: love, prayer, and forgiveness.” ~H. Jackson Brown

“To err is human; to forgive, divine.” ~Alexander Pope

“Resentment is like a glass of poison that a man drinks; then he sits down and waits for his enemy to die.” ~Nelson Mandela

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

“Forgiveness unleashes joy. It brings peace. It washes the slate clean. It sets all the highest values of love in motion.” ~George MacDonald

“To carry a grudge is like being stung to death by one bee.” ~Simon Wiesenthal

“We are all on a life long journey and the core of its meaning, the terrible demand of its centrality is forgiving and being forgiven.” ~Martha Kilpatrick

“Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.” ~Robert Frost

“In forgiving, people are not being asked to forget. On the contrary, it is important to remember, so that we should not let such atrocities happen again. Forgiveness does not mean condoning what has been done. It means taking what happened seriously…drawing out the sting in the memory that threatens our entire existence.” ~Mark Twain

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~Les Brown

“Never does the human soul appear so strong as when is foregoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.” ~Confucius

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.” ~Louis B. Smedes

“Not to forgive is to be imprisoned by the past, by old grievances that do not permit life to proceed with new business. Not to forgive is to yield oneself to another’s control – to be locked into a sequence of act and response, of outrage and revenge, tit for tat, escalating always. The present is endlessly overwhelmed and devoured by the past. Forgiveness frees the forgiver. It extracts the forgiver from someone else’s nightmare.” ~Lance Morrow

“If one by one we counted people out. For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us long. To get so we had no one left to live with. For to be social is to be forgiving.” ~Mahatma Gandhi

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.” ~Laurence Sterne

“Love is an act of endless forgiveness.” ~Jean Vanier

“It is freeing to become aware that we do not have to be victims of our past and can learn new ways of responding. But there is a step beyond this recognition. It is the step of forgiveness. Forgiveness is love practiced among people who love poorly. It sets us free without wanting anything in return.” ~Carolyn Osiek

“One of the secrets of a long and fruitful life is to forgive everybody everything every night before you go to bed.” ~Francois de La Rochefoucauld

“People can be more forgiving than you can imagine. But you have to forgive yourself. Let go of what’s bitter and move on.” ~Bill Cosby

“Everyone says that forgiveness is a lovely idea until he has something to forgive.” ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The supreme act of courage is that of forgiving ourselves. That which I was not but could have been. That which I would have done but did not do. Can I find the fortitude to remember in truth, to understand, to submit, to forgive and to be free to move on in time?” ~Martin Luther King

“‘Tis the most tender part of love, each other to forgive.” ~John Sheffield

“Forgiveness is a funny thing. It warms the heart and cools the sting.” ~William A. Ward

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.” ~William Blake

“Grace is getting something that you don’t deserve; and mercy is not getting something that you do deserve.” ~Francis Bacon

“When we judge, we are pushing people away; we are creating a wall, a barrier. When we forgive we are destroying barriers, we come closer to others.” ~William H. Walton

“My desire is to be a forgiving, non-judgmental person.” ~Janine Turner

“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.” ~John Dryden

“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” ~Louis B. Smedes

“Forgiveness does not mean that we suppress anger; forgiveness means that we have asked for a miracle: the ability to see through mistakes that someone has made to the truth that lies in all of our hearts. Forgiveness is not always easy. At times, it feels more painful than the wound we suffered, to forgive the one that inflicted it. And yet, there is no peace without forgiveness. Attack thoughts towards others are attack thoughts towards ourselves. The first step in forgiveness is the willingness to forgive.” ~Dan Zadra

“To forgive is the highest, most beautiful form of love. In return, you will receive untold peace and happiness.” ~Robert Muller

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.” ~Reinhold Niebuhr

“Reason to rule, mercy to forgive: The first is law, the last prerogative.” ~Louis Dudek

“Forgetting is something that time takes care of, but forgiveness is an act of volition, and only the sufferer is qualified to make the decision.” ~William Carlos Williams

“We may not know how to forgive, and we may not want to forgive; but the very fact we say we are willing to forgive begins the healing practice.” ~Louise Hay

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.” ~Unknown

“A heart filled with anger has no room for love.” ~Unknown

“Forgiveness is me giving up my right to hurt you for hurting me.” ~Anonymous

“Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were.” ~Cherie Carter-Scott

“Forgiveness is giving up the possibility of a better past.” ~Unknown

“When we forgive evil we do not excuse it, we do not tolerate it, we do not smother it. We look the evil full in the face, call it what it is, let its horror shock and stun and enrage us, and only then do we forgive it.” ~Louis B. Smedes

“This is certain, that a man that studieth revenge keeps his wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.” ~Josiah Bailey

“Forgiving does not erase the bitter past. A healed memory is not a deleted memory. Instead, forgiving what we cannot forget creates a new way to remember. We change the memory of our past into a hope for our future.” ~Louis B. Smedes

“You will know that forgiveness has begun when you recall those who hurt you and feel the power to wish them well.” ~Louis B. Smedes

“Forgiveness is the economy of the heart. Forgiveness saves the expense of anger, the cost of hatred and the waste of spirits.” ~Robert Muller